Friday Meetings

I had 2 meetings to attend to yesterday at work, one was at 5.30pm and another was at 8.00pm. My work ends at 6.30pm, so the 8pm was really a meeting timing that everyone had to go out of their way to commit to.

The 5.30pm meeting went well, I met up with the customer on my own without my boss, and I feel like we really hit it off, the customer was receptive to my ideas, she came prepared with mood images she found online, so overall, it was a really productive session and I send her off with a few samples for her to mull over at home. Like most pleasant meetings, it's not really anything worth blogging about and that is a good thing.

The 8.00pm one on the other hand wasn't and is the reason why this post exist.

Just a bit of background, the customer for the 8.00pm meeting, let's called him Cee, had originally scheduled to meet my boss and I last Saturday at 10.30am in our office. I don't work on Saturdays, so this was considered OT for me, and my OT is only claimable for the time I have spend in the office, so travelling time is excluded.

On Saturday, I left the home at about 9.00am, my goal was to reach the office 30 minutes before the appointment so I will have time to print out whatever floorplans or documents that we needed for the meeting and also just chill for a while before we started.

When I was on the train halfway to my destination, my boss forwarded me the message that Cee had send him, requesting to push the meeting back to 11am, it was maybe 9.30am when I got that message, so I just send my boss a thumbs up to acknowledge it.

I didn't mind meeting at 11am, it just means I have more time to chill in the office. I decided to stop by the mall near my office to get a cup of coffee before going in. It was about 10.00am when I was at the cafe, I ordered my coffee and my boss forwarded me another message by Cee again, this time he requested to push back the meeting to 11.30am. 

 A bit annoyed at how last minute this changes were, but figured since I was there already, I will just watch a few YouTube videos in the office to kill time until the meeting starts.

As I was making my way to the office with my coffee in hand, from the mall, which would be a 10 minute journey, my boss forwarded me another message, this time, I was already stepping into the office building, and it was from Cee again, requesting to postpone the meeting to another day. He was being held up by a medical appointment and could no longer make it.

Now that was frustrating because that means I can't claim any hours since I technically didn't end up doing any work. I could only send my boss multiple facepalm emojis and he was very apologetic about it, allowing me to take a Grab home if I wanted to. I headed into the office anyways and ended up just sitting at my desk, sipping my coffee with the air-condition on for the next 2 hours because I had to wait for the coffee to kick in, clear my stomach before I leave. I did manage to get some work done as well, but again, these are unclaimable hours. So that was how last Saturday went, time completely wasted. You would think that if you had a medical appointment in the morning to attend to, scheduling another meeting at 10.30am would probably be a bit tight...RIGHT? This whole waste of my time could have been avoided had Cee exercised better time management, but alas, he didn't, and this wasn't only the only management problem he had.

  So let's forward to yesterday's meeting.

8pm finally rolls around and Cee finally arrived, I had anticipated for him and his wife to attend, but he also brought along his parents, so there were a total of 4 of them and 2 of us, my boss and I. First impression of Cee is he is a friendly guy, and so were his parents, but his wife on the other hand did not look friendly, her expression was quite sullen and I don't know if she was in a bad mood or if that's just her default facial expression from her resting bitch face.

So before the meeting, Cee had already shared with us videos and photos of his new place that he had gotten, it's a resale flat with existing carpentry that he wanted to make amendments to and projects like this are projects that I really hate doing because it's very contractor style, you aren't really doing much design work, you are just fixing issues with the existing cabinetries, and this usually end up becoming more complicated, and when there are design works to be done, you have to think about how to design around existing features, which could end up severely limiting what I can do, leading to the need for a lot of compromises. 

The main revamp that Cee and his wife had wanted to do were the 2 toilets, it was to hack and redo from scratch, which would have been fine, had it not been for the fact that they are so adamant on exploring layouts that simply were not viable for a toilet of their size. 

The meeting yesterday started with my boss essentially telling them what they wanted to do for their toilet was not possible due to space constraint, like doing a wall hung toilet and an oversized basin when you literally have no space to do those, and they also kept insisting on erecting walls in their toilets to do niches for their body wash and shampoo bottles. It's ridiculous, we were stuck on their toilet layout for at lest 30 minutes and as the minutes went by, I could see the wife's expression just getting darker and darker because we were essentially crushing their dream of building their dream toilet.

BUT THEY KEPT INSISTING ON DOING A WALL NICHE FOR THEIR TOILET.

In order to do a wall niche, we have to erect a new wall in order to create those niches, the walls are about 20cm thick, based on their layout, their shower area is already small, like only 70cm wide, if I did a niche, they would only have 50cm left. When my boss and I suggested to build the wall up at other locations, they were against the idea because it was either out of reach for them or there were design compromises that had to be made due to the location of the shower drain.

The new wall niche is one issue, the other issue they had was the placement of their vanity cabinet, which they wanted to install right beside their door, 

This is how their common toilet layout is like, and with any HDB toilet layout for the new flats, the position of where your sink and shower are is pretty much fixed due to the space constraint. Cee and his wife really wanted a larger shower area, but when I told them it's pretty much fixed, Cee came up this layout...

Sink location in Red.

Shower location in Blue

Palm location on my face.

So the the moment you open the door, you are greeted by the side of the basin cabinet, walkway into the toilet is significantly reduced due to the sink location, and how the fuck are you suppose to use the sink properly when the shower is literally behind you, and that hard to reach corner beside the sink and the shower screen, like what the fuck. The layout is so fucking horrible, but the husband kept insisting on doing this layout whenever my boss and I tried to talk him out of it... oh, and the wife is also throwing her wall niche idea in as well.

I was Speechless! It's like they took a bad layout, and decided to make it even worst. Speechless.

I just wanted the meeting to end because it was like talking to walls at that point, plus the wife's furrowed brows during the entire discussion about their toilet was not helping. She was confused because my boss kept talking in circles about why we couldn't do what they wanted, and she was also upset that all their ideas kept getting shot down, but for very valid reasons.  We did eventually move on the other areas of the house, those were more straightforward, I mean after this mess of a toilet layout that they had thought out, literally anything else would be more smooth sailing. 

The meeting finally ends at 9.30pm. Fucking nuts that we had to OT so late, after they already wasted my time on Saturday. My boss also created a group chat for everyone and the husband dropped us a few photos when he got home of his current toilet at his current home with that stupid layout, the door literally opens to the side of the toilet vanity sink and they actually have a smaller than average walking space, the flow of the toilet is fucking horrible. 

At this stage, I am thinking of just taking on a more main-con approach and do whatever the customer wants to do, you want to do a layout that will not be efficient for moving around, we will do it for you. Of course  I will need to very strongly disclaimer to them that advise had been given and if they do end up regretting their layout decision, it's on them. If they don't and they actually love it, don't say it's done by me because one man's beauty is everyone else's garbage.

Oh, and the husband and wife didn't catch my name during the meeting, so the husband literally wrote...

"Thanks D(my boss's name) and (Sorry, forgot to catch your name) for meeting us earlier!"

... I literally laughed out loud when I saw the message at home because I was not expecting to be referred to as (Sorry, forgot to catch your name), it was a nice way to end a painful meeting I guess. 

I am hoping they end up looking for a few other Interior Design companies and decide to go with some newbie designer who will make the rookie mistake of just agreeing to whatever Cee and his wife wants to do to their toilet, and leave my boss and I alone so that we can actually work on Interior Design projects and not this Contractor scope shit. I fucking hate projects like this.